Reading Time: 2 min I used to believe that “we all have 24 hours in a day” and while it’s technically true, it’s really not. Shailja Patel said it very well in a popular tweet from a few years ago: Use public transport? Your 24 hours are not the same as those of private jet owners.Do your own cooking, […]
Productivity
Hotshots shouldn’t get bogged down on tasks
Reading Time: < 1 min In his new book, “A World Without Email“, author Cal Newport pushes people to consider how administrative work affects performance. In particular, he says: Why bother hiring a hotshot if the bulk of their time is spent doing administrative work? I don’t know if “hotshot” is the right word, but I completely agree with his […]
Efficiency needs a purpose
Reading Time: < 1 min I write about productivity and efficiency quite a lot on here, with hundreds of posts that go back well over a decade. I believe that being efficient in your work can pay huge dividends. A fun example is when Google released the “Send & Archive” button in Gmail back in 2009, and I estimated that […]
Follow-up is crucial
Reading Time: 3 min A few years ago, we were all working in our office when a local company stopped by with a box of bagels and coffee for us. We didn’t know them, but they were reaching out to local marketing companies to let people know they exist (they were photographers, so potentially a good partner). They seemed […]
Missive email
Reading Time: 3 min For the last few weeks, all of us at GreenMellen have been using the Missive email app and and it’s been great. Missive is an email program that works with your existing account (Gmail, Office 365, iCloud, etc) and adds some neat features. Here is a quick video that shows what it does: We aren’t […]
The rabbit trail of yak shaving
Reading Time: < 1 min You may have never heard the term “yak shaving” before, but you’ve likely done it. Joi Ito summarized it well here: You start out deciding to tidy your room and you realize that in order to do that you’ll need some more trash bags, so you need to go to the shops, which will involve […]
Everything has a place
Reading Time: 4 min As you may know, I’m a big fan of the “inbox zero” concept. Things come into my email inbox, I deal with them, and I clean it out. I find that when people struggle with keeping their inbox clean, they tend to fall into three groups: People that aren’t at a computer frequently enough during […]
Control your inputs, control your time
Reading Time: 4 min We all have things popping up to distract us all day long, many of them coming from our cell phone. This is a quick look at the “inputs” section of the digital efficiency framework, to help you get those under control. If you can keep your inputs manageable, everything else will tend to flow better. […]
How I plan out my future posts
Reading Time: 2 min Blogging daily is tough. I just passed six months and I’m going strong, but it’ll end at some point. For now, though, here is how I make it happen. Lots of ideas The biggest challenge for me is coming up with ideas. Following the idea of “long periods of thinking, short periods of writing“, actually […]
GTD can help you focus on the present
Reading Time: < 1 min David Allen, author of “Getting Things Done” (and the process the book explains, known simply as “GTD”) put out a very simple tweet recently. He said: If you can’t read the embedded tweet, he said: “GTD = freedom of consciousness to be present with what you’re doing.“ If you practice GTD to a decent degree, […]